


Soul Cracks

by irgendweristdochegal



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drug Abuse, John in Afghanistan, M/M, OD, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Soul Bond, WIP, soul cracks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-20 00:59:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3630756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irgendweristdochegal/pseuds/irgendweristdochegal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soul cracks are a very rare thing. They only happen to people in the darkest of times. Of course it is something Sherlock Holmes and John Watson never believed themselves to get and still they are hardly surprised.<br/>Sherlock gets his first when he is 24, OD-ing on cocaine.<br/>John is in the hot Afghani sun, getting shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soul Cracks

**Author's Note:**

> Heyy!!  
> This is my very first work of fanfiction ever and I am not sure about the plot and everything. The idea just popped into my head while reading hundreds of fabulous fanfics and it didn't let me go. So here it is. I have a plan how the story should continue, but I am great at procrastinating and I don't know if anyone would even read the story. Sorry for being terrible at writing! I am also NOT a native speaker and have no beta so it might be a bit weird to read? Please comment on any mistakes you find, I am happy to change them!  
> This a work of fanfiction, nothing but the plot belongs to me.  
> Have fun reading and please comment if you want me to continue this story or if you just want to tell me to stop writing because it's terrible! Thanks lovelies xxxx

The first time it happened he was 24 years old. One week previous his last boyfriend, Victor, left him, or did he leave Victor? He wasn’t sure and to be honest he didn’t really care. Victor had been a fun distraction with the cocaine and heroin and other mixed drugs with fashionabl names and various effects, but in the end not even drugs could keep Victor interesting for more than a couple of months. And this time had run out 8 days previous.

People were so dull. Sherlock never bore staying with another person for a prolonged period of time. And luckily, this feeling was always reciprocated.

True, Victor had been more interesting than most, having a high above average intellect and complex knowledge of chemistry and physics, but all the sex got tedious and Vic got so clingy. No, Sherlock didn’t want to move in with him, no, he could not leave the experiment to spend time with him (couldn’t someone with profound knowledge of chemistry see that the experiment was time sensitive?) and no, he most definitely didn’t want to meet Vics family.

And so it ended as it always did: a week of melodrama and a break up. Thankfully Sherlock had expected that much and got an extra dose of cocaine from his dealer (yes, he was not that dependent on Victor, thank you very much). He couldn’t remember anything of that, all hazy memories. He remembered some shouting, the banging of the door. Victor left, who broke up was irrelevant.

But then, there was no one to talk to, except the skull who must be somewhere in these boxes which Sherlock still hadn’t bothered to unpack since he moved in. He would be out of the flat in less than a month anyway, the landlady had already complained about the funny smells and little explosions over a dozen times. It wouldn’t be long till he had to leave and find a new flat. Maybe a bit closer to the city center this time, more expensive, but also closer to Uni and the clubs. True, he had spent most of his trust fund for drugs, but it should still be enough for a decent enough flat.

At first he didn’t even see it. The scibble on his arm. He later deduced it must have been the overdose, the trigger to crack his soul. But then, he was too much in a drug induced haze to really acknowledge anything other than the blissful clarity of his mind solving complex puzzles while high.

This time it wasn’t his brother who found him. It was one of the homeless people who saw him half dead in a side ally. Normally they wouldn’t bother calling an ambulance for a junkie who might not even want to survive the OD, but then, Sherlock Holmes wasn’t just anyone, was he? And so he ended up in the hospital and later in rehab. Not that he stayed long. A month, he couldn’t endure more. Good that Mycroft wasn’t in the country, he would have known better than to leave Sherlock unguarded in the rehab room. 

Anyway, Sherlock got out, and the first place he went to was not his flat or one of his dealers. No, his first encounter was with the girl who worked at the Red Dragon. You recognize a good tattoo studio on its windows and the position of the reception. The windows indicate the tidiness and hygienic standard of the establishment, and the reception captures the love for lasting-ness. And in the Red Dragon all of these fit perfectly. The windows were small, but well cleaned, the reception stand in just the right ankle to the door and windows. If the great Sherlock Holmes would ever in his whole life get a tattoo (and really what sense did that make? Etching some irrelevant nothing with ink into his skin, what for? He could remember everything in his mind palace), it would be there.

And that really was the only explanation for the line on his left forearm. He couldn’t remember it and this on itself was a mystery, as Sherlock always remembered everything and pain always left an extra copy on his hard drive, but he just didn’t. Not one glimpse. Neither on how he got to the other side of London with that much cocaine rushing through his veins, nor of any pain.

And the most disturbing thing: what the hell did this line on his arm even mean? _I cry for our paths must part._ Clearly he wasn’t that sentimental for Victor, was he? No other way than to ask, and no time like the present. He swept into the little studio, deducing the receptionist and his surroundings. She obviously didn’t recognize him, but he probably looked different, all cleaned up. After some tedious chitchat he was positive that he didn’t get his tattoo at this place, no record of his name, nor any of his pseudonyms. And no entry about his tattoo either. Interesting. Sherlock loved a good mystery and this would prove to be his very own, secret case.

  


  


John Watson was 36 when the bullet teared through his shoulder and ended his military career.

Being wounded in action was not that uncommon, it was an active warzone after all. But John never imagined it would be him. Him taking the bullet. Him experiencing what he did so often see in others. He knew they were shooting at him when he was leaning over Bills corpse still trying to save his life and at the same time shielding him from any more bullets coming their direction, relying on his body as always. Most bullets missed their target or hit the west, but one didn’t. It tore through Captain Watsons shoulder and started the waterfall of red liquid pouring out. And in the end the whole saving mission was for naught. Bill Murray still died on the battlefield, almost taking his best friend with him. 

John Watson was discharged. No matter how good a doctor he had been, the military had no need for a surgeon with a tremor in his hand and a limp. A limp that wouldn’t go away, no matter that John knew that there was no real damage done to this part of his body and it was only psychosomatic, it bloody hell still hurt.

But that day in the hot Afghani sun didn’t just paint a scar over John Watsons shoulder. No, it also left words under the ugly exit wound, barely legible. 

The first months were spent in a hospital somewhere in Afghanistan. Thanks to their exclusive mission in the desert it took some time to get John back to a field hospital and the wound got terribly infected, leaving the scar even uglier than it would have been otherwise. After that he was sent back to London.

But it was not the city he had left all those years ago or maybe he was just not the same who once left with excitement humming through his veins. Now he came back, broken and crippled. He didn’t like seeing himself topless in the mirrors nowadays. He used to be good looking, fit, with well-defined muscles and always an easy smile on his lips. Now he only saw an ugly scar, thinned lips and a sentence that told him just how broken he really was. _Don’t go, your death will break my heart._ Fate had a funny way like that. There was no one waiting for him here, no one’s heart to be broken.

He had stroked over the thin black lines over and over again. It was written in a loopy scrawl, almost artfully, almost over his heart, but not quite. A soul crack, the doctors had said. Joked about the pretty girlfriend just waiting for John to come home. They didn’t know there was noone to come home to and John never told them. A soul crack didn’t just happen, it had its reasons and it was therefore perfectly reasonable to assume the sentence came from a loved one back in London, manifesting in Johns skin in a moment of great despair. But John knew and he despised fate for such a cruel joke. 

His therapist had said it gets easier with time. It didn’t. Neither did the nightmares. It took all of John’s willpower to put the gun aside every evening after cleaning it. Sometimes it was harder and he had put the barrel of the gun into his mouths more often than he cared to count but somehow he never pulled the trigger. Maybe it was the flicker of hope by the damned sentence almost over his heart, the hope that maybe someone really cared that deeply for him, a silver lining on the horizon. Maybe it was just cowardice.  



End file.
